Monday, 14 March 2016

Inter-Korean relations have reached their nadir. Following the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and subsequent long-range rocket launch that placed a satellite in orbit, Seoul has closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Pyongyang has cut military communication lines with the South and shut down the liaison office at Panmunjeom.

This means that all inter-Korean cooperation and exchange, as well as the channels for emergency communication between North and South Korea have been suspended. Meanwhile, the Security Council has passed Resolution 2270, noted for the introduction of severe sectoral sanctions against Pyongyang.

US and South Korean soldiers are currently taking part in annual large-scale military exercises, which reportedly feature training and simulations of preemptive strikes on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile sites, amphibious landings on North Korean shores, and a”beheading operation” aimed at assassinating Kim Jong-un and toppling his government in the event of war.

Monday, 25 January 2016

Myanmar is a country rapidly moving toward uncharted political terrain. By March 2016, the National League for Democracy (NLD) will take power for the first time in history, bringing an end to five decades of rule by the military establishment. Once suppressed by the military junta, the NLD – led by longtime dissident and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi – has secured an indisputable victory during the country’s November 2015 elections, winning a majority in both houses of Parliament.

The ascent of the NLD comes at a time when Myanmar finds itself at a new strategic crossroads, pulled toward the geopolitical orbit of major powers: the United States and China, as well as India. Since the outgoing military-backed government opened the country to Western investment in 2011, the US has prioritised its relationship with Myanmar as part of its strategy to reassert influence in the Asia-Pacific region. The country has received numerous visits by US high-ranking leaders, including President Obama on two occasions.

China, the country’s neighbour and largest trading partner, has long suspected Washington of seeking to influence Myanmar’s opening to nurture a regime with an antagonistic position toward Beijing. While the NLD positions itself to form a new government, the rise of this political force with a thoroughly pro-Western orientation, which has long anchored itself as a pro-democracy movement lauded throughout the West, begs the question of Myanmar’s place in the current geopolitical scenario.

Wednesday, 21 October 2015

In the run-up to Singapore’s recent general elections, the victory of the People’s Action Party (PAP) – which has presided over transformational social and economic development throughout its continuous five-decade rule – was a forgone conclusion. The question on people’s minds was rather, to what extent could opposition parties dent the ruling party’s dominance and gain a foothold in Parliament?

Tens of thousands attended rallies organized by opposition parties during the campaign period, leading many to believe that opposition candidates would steadily gain more ground after the ruling PAP suffered its worst electoral performance in history during the last election cycle in 2011. Contrary to predictions of a watershed election, the PAP secured huge margins, claiming nearly 70 percent of the popular vote in a spectacular rebound.

2015’s elections were presented as an “unprecedented” challenge to Singapore’s ruling party in the international media. On the ground, the sense of a growing momentum for left-leaning opposition parties like the Worker’s Party (WP) and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and other largely untested parties could be felt. Even government-friendly state media devoted front page coverage to well-attended opposition rallies.

Despite projections and popular sentiments that suggested a real possibility for opposition parties to capture a larger share of the vote, opposition parties instead saw their share of the vote plummet in 2015 by as much as 16 percent from 2011, with no headway made. How then, in the current political landscape, should the PAP’s stunning resurgence be accounted for?

Sunday, 6 September 2015

Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak – a British-educated technocrat with a reputation for opulence – is at the center of an unprecedented scandal. A sovereign wealth fund established to develop lucrative industries and boost economic growth in Malaysia, the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), has incurred more than $11 billion in debts and is at the center of a political and financial controversy.

In July, an exposé in the Wall Street Journal published documents sourced from an ongoing government probe into 1MDB that traced nearly $700 million being channeled into Najib’s personal bank accounts from entities linked to the indebted fund. The fund paid inflated prices for assets and laundered money that Najib used to fund his campaign in the 2013 general elections, according to the source.

The allegations against the prime minister caused an uproar in Malaysia on both sides of the political divide. Najib denied wrong-doing and dismissed the report as political sabotage. In the days that followed, special task forces raided the offices of 1MDB and three linked companies, freezing bank accounts and seizing documents that could have paved the way for possible criminal charges against Najib and others.

Friday, 10 July 2015

Often touted as the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s re-engagement with Asia, a close vote in the US Senate has brought the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a major step closer to becoming law. Facing significant opposition within his own party, the US president has secured fast-track negotiating authority, limiting Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate the contents of the trade accord.

Though the US Congress and American public will have an opportunity to review the deal before it is voted on, fast-track passage procedure reduces time for debate and prohibits amendments to the proposed legislation, limiting Congress to passing an up-or-down vote on the deal. Negotiated behind closed doors and drafted under tremendous secrecy for nearly a decade, elected representatives have thus far had limited access to the draft text.

The negotiations, intended to eventually create a multilateral trade and foreign investment agreement, involve Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Comprising some 40 percent of the world’s economy, the trade pact represents Washington’s response to the rising influence of China, which is not a participant, despite being the region’s largest economy and the largest trading partner of Asia-Pacific economies.

Bringing together a diverse grouping of culturally and economically disparate countries, the pact aims to enforce a common regulatory framework that governs rules for tariffs and trade disputes, patents and intellectual property, banking, foreign investment and more. The deal is widely seen as being representative of Washington’s long-term commitment to the Asia-Pacific region.

Friday, 5 June 2015

The dire plight of refugees, asylum-seekers and economic migrants fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh has captured global attention in recent weeks, as Southeast Asian nations struggle to cope with the influx of thousands who have languished in unimaginable conditions on rickety boats in the Andaman Sea, often for months at a time without adequate food and water supplies.

Facing a perilous journey in hope of finding relief from persecution and poverty, the tragic predicament facing these migrants has forced regional policymakers into an ethical quandary. Moreover, the grim discovery of mass gravesites and people-smuggling camps deep in the jungles of northern Malaysia underscore the seriousness and scale of the region’s human trafficking problem.

At the root of the ongoing crisis is Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya community, a Muslim ethnic minority group whose citizenship was rescinded in a 1982 law passed by the then-ruling military junta. Although records of Rohingya settlements date back centuries, Myanmar has asserted that they are illegal immigrants with no right to citizenship, subjecting the community to institutionalized discrimination with limited access to education, healthcare and freedom of movement.

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

After nearly seven weeks of airstrikes launched by Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab allies, a fragile temporary ceasefire appears to have taken hold over most of Yemen. The bombing campaign was launched in late March with the goal of reinstalling ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now exiled in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. It also aims to thwart the advance of the Houthi rebels, who control the capital and large swathes of territory, and are now the country’s dominant political force.

The military strikes have had a calamitous effect on the already desperate humanitarian situation facing the country, resulting in more than 1,500 civilian deaths, including scores of children. The Saudi-led coalition has blockaded ports and bombed runways, preventing the delivery of food shipments, aid and humanitarian supplies, which have exacerbated the severe shortages in a country that imports more than 90 percent of its food and water supplies. A lack of fuel and medicines has compounded the suffering of civilians, many of whom face malnourishment and dire poverty.

Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, must now cope with tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians who have been made refugees by the Saudi offensive, a seemingly impossible task for a country under siege and without an effect leadership. The Saudi-led “Operation Decisive Storm,” launched just two months into the reign of King Salman ibn Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, marks a shift away from a foreign policy that heavily leveraged the use of proxies and toward a far more assertive interventionist posture.

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Nile Bowie is a Singapore-based political commentator and columnist for the Malaysian Reserve newspaper. His articles have appeared in numerous international media outlets, including Russia Today (RT) and Al Jazeera, and newspapers such as the International New York Times, the Global Times and the New Straits Times. He is a research assistant with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), a NGO based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.